Fear, courage and change. These are words that are connected through a linear progression. Yesterday, Sunday, Dec. 1, marked the 58th anniversary of one of the great examples of this progression in our history.
Rosa Parks had put in a day’s work as a seamstress and boarded her bus for her ride home at the end of the day. The bus was separated into a “Whites” section in the front and a “Colored” section in the back. The sections were separated by a simple sign. As the white section filled up the bus driver came back to move the sign back to create more room for the white people to sit. This action of moving the sign back required Rosa Parks and the other three now in front of the sign to move back. Three of them complied but Mrs. Parks simply moved over next to the window when she was asked to give up her seat.
Parks had been involved in civil rights activism for many years. I don’t have any way of knowing this for sure but I believe she had been preparing herself for this day. When she woke up that morning she may not even have known that this would be the day. She may not have known that when she stepped on the bus to go home. I can’t imagine what was going through her mind as those other three people stood up and moved. I’ve got to believe there was a high level of fear but her level of courage was even greater. Orrin Woodward stated this mindset best when he said, “Courage results when one’s convictions are bigger than one’s fears.”
When you become more courageous than fearful there is often a price to be paid. Parks paid a price. She lost her job as a seamstress and I can’t begin to imagine what other kinds of abuse she may have suffered. Her husband quit his job as a result of restrictions placed on him because of his wife’s stand on the bus that day.
Parks simple stand, or sit, on the bus that day was the beginning of a 381 day boycott of the Montgomery bus system by the black community. This boycott crippled the transportation system financially and forced them to legally integrate on Dec. 21, 1956.
Parks story was captured in her autobiography titled, My Story. She sums up what happened that day in her book by saying, “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old the, I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
Thank you, Rosa Parks, for setting an example of courage for people of all colors!
So, are you tired of giving in on something? Which is bigger, your fears or your convictions? Courage can strike in the mundane moments. Is today your day to be courageous?
Have a STRONG and COURAGEOUS day!
